Everneath by Brodi Ashton Page B

are the screens of?” I asked.
    “Elvis Presley as a corpse. You wanna come look?” Cole gave me a grin as if he’d just asked if I wanted to see rainbows being made.
    “You had me at ‘corpse.’”
    Jack chuckled. “Saying good-bye here. Remember?”
    I turned to Jack, rose up on my tiptoes, and kissed his lips lightly. “Two weeks, Jack. It’ll fly by.”
    I started to back up, but Jack grabbed my hand and pulled me close. “No you don’t,” he said. “The corpse can wait.”
    He gave me a kiss that was not quite appropriate for public view, and I would’ve been embarrassed if I hadn’t lost the ability to think straight. His arms reached around my back, and he pulled me in tight against him so that my feet were barely touching the ground. And things started disappearing around us, just like they did every time Jack kissed me.
    He pulled back. “What were you saying about two weeks?”
    “That it will feel like forever,” I said, breathless.
    “That’s better.” Jack lowered his head so his forehead was touching mine. “Miss you.”
    “Miss you too,” I whispered.
    Somehow, he finally let me go, and Cole—who had stepped away during our kiss—stood next to me as I watched the bus cough and choke its way up the hill and out of the parking lot. Before it disappeared completely, Cole tugged on my arm.
    “Cheer up, Nik. You can help me splash some shirts.” He released a breath of air on my face, and suddenly I was overwhelmed with a strange feeling of loss. I couldn’t explain where it came from. It was as if an electrical pulse had charged the air and penetrated my skin, and I was left with the sense that something was slipping from my fingers, and I couldn’t hold on to it. I clenched my car keys in my pocket, but that wasn’t it. Then I jerked my head back toward the buses, and all I could think about was the way Lacey Greene had been staring at me, and how Jack was on a bus with her. And how she was equating camp to a weekend in Vegas.
    “You okay?” Cole asked.
    I tried to shake the feeling away. Jack was mine. There was nothing to worry about.
    “Yeah, I’m fine.” I turned to follow him toward GraphX. “You don’t have to feel bad for me. I’m not lonely.”
    “Don’t be silly. I don’t feel bad for you. You’d be doing me a favor.” As he spoke, he winked at me, and I couldn’t help feeling a tingle.
    “Where are your groupies?” I asked, referring to the constant entourage that usually surrounded him.
    “They get in the way. Especially when I’m working with paint. Too many cooks, you know.”
    “Oh.” I slowed down. “Maybe you’d rather—”
    “You’re not a groupie,” he interrupted. He put his hand on my back and urged me forward. That strange feeling of loss wasn’t as bad now.
    The inside of the workshop smelled like fresh paint and developing chemicals. Paint spots dotted the floor and most of the walls. Two silk screens were drying on one of the industrial counters. The image on the screen was a haunting portrait of Elvis Presley, not necessarily dead, but not alive, either. The eye sockets were sunken and the cheeks hollow and ashen, the lips drawn back, exposing long teeth. Yet he cradled the microphone like a baby with one hand, and had just finished a strum on his guitar with the other. It was a beautiful rendition caught between life and death, trapped between this world and the next.
    I fingered the silk screen carefully.
    “Wow,” I whispered. “This is amazing. Where did you find the original?”
    “I drew it,” he said offhandedly. He focused on the stack of T-shirts on the other counter, laying them out.
    “Cole, you’re messing with me! It’s too…” I just shook my head as he turned to look at me. “No words.”
    He took a couple of steps closer to me. “I think that’s the nicest review I’ve ever received.”
    And just like that, he was standing too close. I could see the glint of the iron ball on his tongue post, and before